Leveraging Blockchain to Secure Smart Cities

By StartUp City | Monday, March 18, 2019

The core concept of smart cities is the utmost use of the internet and other digital tools to connect facilities and people residing in the city. Governments are leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT and other intelligent technologies to improve the quality of life in the urban cities. However, the increased dependency on the digital medium has raised the risk of cybercrimes in the smart urban landscape. Devices connected using IoT and a vast communication network poses various security challenges that require a powerful cybersecurity solution to safeguard the data.

Smart cities have a network of big and small, enterprise and consumer IoT devices which are connected to a central system. The number of connected devices is proliferating at a rapid pace, and hence the smart cities require robust security solutions that can be scaled according to the requirement without compromising on quality or efficiency. Blockchain technology is widely regarded as the ideal technology to provide efficient security measures with various robust, scalable solutions. The success of cryptocurrencies has proved the mettle of blockchain technology in providing a secure platform for the management of billions of connected devices. Here are the few benefits of implementing blockchain technology for smart cities:

Digital IDs: Digital IDs are a unique and tamper-free way to securely identify authenticate, and authorize every resident and the connected devices in a smart city network. These IDs are an ideal way to validate and access various services to link, store, share, and authorize the use of personal information by relevant agencies and service providers.

Scalability: Blockchain technology offers decentralization, which stores all the information across all the devices in the network. This will allow authorities to retrieve information even if a system in the network gets compromised. The multi-node feature of blockchain technology offers a scalable solution for the ever-widening smart city perimeter.

Tamper-proof logs: The digital ledger of blockchain tools record all access and communication within the network in tamper-proof logs and makes it difficult for attackers to hide or erase their attempts to access or misuse information within the smart city network.